Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 326: Streets of Rage

Episode Date: September 21, 2020

Jeremy Parish, Stuart Gipp, and Digital Foundry's John Linneman master the art of counting to four as they deliver a video game history beatdown in the form of a comprehensive retrospective on Sega's Streets of Rage franchise. Cover illustration by Leeann Hamilton.

You're listening to Retronauts a part of the Greenlit Podcast Network, a collective of creator-owned and fully independent podcasts focused on pop culture and video gaming. To learn more and to catch up on all the other network shows, check out Greenlitpodcasts.com. This week in Retronauts, we take a trip down the avenues of anger. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Retronauts. I am Jeremy Parrish. And this week, we are somewhat belatedly talking about the Streets of Rage series. And I'm saying somewhat belatedly because this has actually been on my agenda to cover for quite a while because I knew Streets of Rage 4 was coming out. That's like two years now. And now the game is actually out, and we still haven't talked about Streets of Rage. So that's kind of bad.

But it's also kind of good because it means I was able to pull together a couple of people to talk about the game with me who are really, really knowledgeable about the series. And on top of that, we have the perspective of is Streets of Rage for Actually Good before it would have just been speculation. But now we can say definitively, maybe. And so we turn our gaze to Europe to, let's see, the nearest time zone to me would be the UK. So who do we have over there? Hi, I'm Stuart Jip. I wanted to do my own version of avenues of anger. I was going to say Pathways of Pugilism.

That's a good one. I think it is pretty good. I'm not going to, you know, I don't want to sort of take my own horn here, but I was quite proud of it and I was up quite late coming up with it. My one concern about pathways is it sounds like it's less formal than a street, whereas a street is like paved and really kind of like delineated. Pathways is more like, you know, you found this kind of natural route through the woods. So it's more like, you know, kind of dirt. And so I guess there are parts of the series that take you out of the city. So that's okay. So we'll go with that.

Pathways of Pugilene. Very good. And also, even further over there from me, we have John Linneman with Digital Foundry, making my first appearance here on Richard Nauts, I think. Yes, this is long overdue. People have been asking for it. I've been asking for it. You've been asking for it, and now it's actually happening. And, you know, I can't think of a better topic than a Sega-related topic. And, you know, I know you're primarily known for the amazing work you do going into depth on technology and, you know, like just the prowess behind the programming and design of classic games. And by all means, talk about the cool tech stuff you find in Streets of Rage. But I also know you're doing

this because you just love video games and you love Streets of Rage. So please just, you know, it's okay to take off the digital foundry hat and just, like, be a fan. That's great. It's a bit relaxing to do that, you know? It's a chance to talk about the whole product. Yes, Retronauts is a relaxing podcast for your entertainment and edification, elucidation, something like that. Anyway, we are talking about Streets of Rage, which in some territories, mainly Japan, is known as Bearknuckle, the famous Sega brawler that appeared on Sega Mega Drive, aka Genesis. We'll call it Mega Drive this episode, just in deference to the fact that there's two of you and one of me.

And, yes, it was very good. And apparently Streets of H4 is very good. I haven't played it yet, even though my company is publishing and a physical copy of it. What can I say? I'm waiting for the physical release. Yeah, it's not out yet. You can't be blamed for that. Exactly.

Exactly. I am captive to release schedules and Nintendo production, cart production. Anyway, so to begin with, I'd like to ask both of you, when did you first discover Streets of Age? When did you first play it? And what was your initial impression? Like at what point in life were you at and, you know, kind of how did you come across it? Stuart, let's start with you. I first came across the sort of concept of Streets of Rage from the UK comic Sonic the Comic, because they ran a comic strip based on it, amongst other things, which was actually written by Mark Miller, the most popular and undivisive.

comic writer of all time. What kind of horrible things did he do to the cast of? I can't even imagine what happened to poor Blaze. He was on his best behavior because, I mean, technically it was for children. The worst you'd get is there may have been a little bit of blood, but it's not really canon. And it's not that interesting or good, to be honest. But it was the first time I came across it.

It's got to be better than the Marvel Comics Double Dragon series, though. I haven't read it, but I can only imagine. The actual game I played the second one because I think it may have been illegal to own a Mega Drive and not have Streets of Rage 2. I'm sure that everyone I know had one had that game. It's like with the television licenses in the UK, right? There's also the Streets of Rage 2 license. The Streets of Rage 2 license, yeah, it's very controversial that we still have that because it really is very old now. But every year.

But no, I did play that one first, which meant when I... I played Streets of Rage 1 eventually, I was sort of a bit like, hmm, but that one was also fairly ubiquitous because it was included on at least one of the mega games compilations. I don't know if they were a thing in America, so I assume they were. Yeah, we had a few of the sort of compilation cards where you'd get like three games in one. It was like Streets of Rage and Sonic 2 and Mr. or Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine or something. I can't remember exactly what was on there, but it was a golden axe, something like that. It is interesting, actually, I've got to say that the mega games carts, having moved to Europe, I've discovered just how ubiquitous these things are.

They are everywhere. Like, to the point where if I need a spare case for a megadrive game, it's actually cheaper just to buy a copy of Mega Games 1 than it is to buy a case by itself. So, playing the original Street of Rage is, no, let me jump back to Street of Rage 2, actually, because that was the first one I played. I remember being very, at the time I loved it, because it's still a game, which obviously will get into it in time, but it's just a game with enormous, I think, impact and an enormous sort of presence. It's got this spectacular soundtrack that sticks in, I just think it sticks in everyone's mind who plays it, really. It's one of those, it's like one of the Mega Drive games. It might be the kind of pinnacle Mega Drive game, but it's not Sonic, to me.

When I think Mega Drive, I think, yeah, I've got to have that. You've got to have Streets of Rage, too. It's that significant, I think. Everyone had the first one because it was on one of those cartridges that came bundled with everyone's mega drives. It's a huge thing. The Streets of Rage 3, no, I didn't see that one at all. That was like a mystery to me until the start of game re-released, but the first two were basically everywhere. All right.

And John, what about you? Yeah, so, I mean, I played the original at a friend's house for the first time. I think, like many other people, I was really into side-scrolling brawlers at the time, since they were kind of the thing. But mostly it was limited to the arcade. And when Streets of Rage first hit, I suppose it was kind of after Final Fight for the Super NES had released. And at least amongst Friends,

it was sort of known that, hey, you can't play two player in Final Fight. And that sort of became one of those console war talking points, if you will. So the fact that you could do two player in Streets of Rage was a big deal. And that's something we played a lot of back in the day, especially I remember going,

to friend's houses after school, playing through the original game and then eventually got into two and three after that. So I never actually had a copy of one, but I did play a lot of it. All right. Yeah, so as for myself,

you know, I didn't own a Sega system until like probably 1998 or so when I finally picked up a Saturn or 97, picked up a Saturn and a Genesis Model 3 Genesis, I'm afraid to say. So I'd never actually played Streets of Rage on Real Hardware until pretty recently. It was always, you know, on compilations or through emulation. So I feel like it didn't have the same effect on me than it did a lot of other people

because it's just not the same. And, you know, mostly I didn't play a lot of brawlers at home. I think the Super NES port of Final Fight kind of put me off of that. And so it was mostly a thing that I would do in arcades. And Streets of Rage was not an arcade game. and therefore I did not encounter it very often. But I will say, John, you mentioned that Streets of Rage came out after Final Fight for Super NES. Streets of Rage actually shipped in the U.S.

the same month as Final Fight for Super NES. So they were there face to face in the shops, you know, at retail. And you're right, that absolutely was a console-worse thing. Because even though Final Fite had, you know, bigger sprites and more, I guess, more detailed graphics, I would say. Streets of Rage moved faster. It didn't have the horrific slowdown that Final Fight did. Like, you know, when Hollywood drops his dynamite, the whole game just kind of like moves to about three frames per second. It's terrible.

And as you mentioned, the original version of Final Fight for Super NES was a single player game. And so, yeah, that was kind of one of those things. Like, yes, Super NES is cool. It has Mario and it has Street Fighter 2. But on the other hand, when you punch Scorpion, he sweats. and also Hager fights alone. So, you know, it was kind of a big hit against the Super NES. And then, you know, when Final Fight did ship for Sega CD, that had cooperative play.

It had Guy in it. Whereas you had to buy a separate copy or actually steal it from Blockbuster if you wanted to play Guy. You couldn't even buy it. Oh, that's right. That was rent alone. Wow. Yeah, it was released at retail in Japan, but in the U.S.

Final Fight Guy was only a Blockbuster exclusive. Probably for good reason, honestly. I find it astonishing that Final Fight shipped with no multiplayer. That's crazy to me. That really is. I mean, that's the sort of 89 is it, the arcade version? Yeah, the arcade version is 89, and the Super Ines version is 1991. And, John, have you ever done a DF retro on early Super NES games, like Gradius 3 and Final Fight and so forth,

and why those games have so much slowdown? So I've been thinking about that. I haven't actually gone into depth on those games, but I know at least based on ghouls and ghosts, that was also notorious. I know you love that game. Well, at least the Super N.E.S ones are right. It's the ultimate.

Yeah, exactly. But the issue with that one was actually sort of a programming error more than anything else, and it was actually fixed by the community at a much later date. So it was never a CPU limitation or an issue with the Super NES. I think it was just a case of developers getting their hands on a new, machine, not having complete familiarity with its capabilities, and just sort of, you know, implementing not the best code into the game. Yeah, I've heard that a lot of the early Super NES games were compiled in C, like a high level

language as opposed to like working closer to the metal. And so there's like this level of interpretation and not emulation, but basically just like, you know, every instruction takes two or three times as many cycles to process as it should. And once they actually got a sense of how the processor worked, the system worked, then you stopped seeing that slowdown. But at the very beginning, they maybe didn't have a sense of what the hardware was really going to be, what the final spec was, or the very specific custom chip design calls and things like that. So they were just like, well, let's just work in an abstract language that'll port to anything. So anyway, this is kind of getting into the final fight on Super NES was kind of getting into the weeds.

crappy. And Streets of Rage was not. It looked good, even though it didn't have as many colors and the sprites weren't quite as big. It moved really fast. It had multiplayer. It had a sense of real coolness to it that you didn't get from Final Fight. Like Final Fight, I don't know. You know, you got like the Thoms of Finland thing going on with Hager and a lot of the enemies. And that's its own kind of like campy vibe. But Streets of Rage was just like genuinely cool. Like the protagonist, and the enemies and the settings, the environments, everything was just like, and the music, of course. It was all just super, like, self-confident. It had that sort of like effortless cool that the best Sega games do. I mean, you're absolutely right on that, but I think it's important to consider

when Final Fight was first shipped to arcades and what it meant. Oh, sure, sure. Because that was, you know, that was kind of the game that brought the brawler back to the forefront. There was that period, I think it was sort of 89 through the early to mid-90s, where, you know, that was kind of, you know, that was the type of game that dominated the arcade. I guess Street Fighter 2 is the one that kind of killed that rather quickly. But everybody was producing brawlers at the time. Konami had tons of them. And there was plenty getting porch to even the NES,

and they were pretty good and two player often. Yeah, I feel like Double Dragon kind of started the brawler, made people think, oh, it's cool to hang out with a friend and kill big thugs. And then Final Fight was like, okay, double dragon's neat, but here's how you really do it. Exactly. But, you know, yeah, it was two years old. the time it came to Super Neas, which now seems like no big deal. But at that point in video game history, that was an epic. I mean, that was a huge amount of time. And, you know, games took

six to nine months to produce. So you could have like three generations of brawlers that had been designed in the wake of Final Fight that would, you know, were basically reactions to that and then reactions to the reactions. So Final Fight did seem a little kind of like, oh, it's, you know, it's Final Fight. I like this game. It's fun. but it's kind of, it feels a little dated, whereas Streets of Rage was not. It was... You get that same impression if you look at Sega's Golden Axe, which also had a Genesis port or Megadrive conversion very early on, and that's also very shaky.

It feels very early. It's missing a lot of parallax scrolling. It just, it doesn't have the, um, the feel that Streets of Rage has. So, you know, Streets of Rage is kind of second generation software for the console, I think, at that point. But even then, one thing I haven't heard touched on. and I have to put on my technical hat for a second here. Do it.

Streets of Rage runs at 30 frames per second, which always sort of bothered me, I suppose. But this is actually kind of a problem with many brawlers, specifically from Technos, Japan, I guess. The double dragon games, for instance, they were all 30 or lower. Yeah, or lower. Including Super Double Dragon, which was just atrocious when it hit, I think.

It didn't put a good foot forward. So this is sort of a flaw with Streets of Rage 1. So it's true that Final Fight and Super NES has a lot of slowdown. To get around that with Streets of Rage, though, they ran the game at half the frame rate. So you're not running up against the Sprite limitation issues as much, and it's able to proceed at the normal pace without dropping any frames, even if it's not as fluid as what would come later. Yeah, and that's something that doesn't bother me as much as it does some people.

But I definitely, with older games especially, I can really feel the difference between 30 and 60 frames per second. And, you know, I've spent so much time working on videos for NES and so forth that, especially Game Boy, like, it's kind of rare to come across a Game Boy game that actually is running at 60 frames per second. You'd be surprised. I mean, you've covered so many Game Boy games, but really a good chunk of the library is 60. And that was a, that's a weird advantage Game Boy has over, like, the links in the game gear. But we don't need to get down that path right now. Well, I definitely, I definitely encounter a lot of, a lot of Game Boy games that are just chugging a lot of them. Yeah, you're right.

Especially early on. It was not great. But, you know, even moving at just with a 30 frame per second limitation, which is, you know, still within the bounds of human perception, it makes a difference. This was a really super rad game. And that's the technical term. That is, it is technically super rad. So, yeah, it was definitely Sega's sort of entree into this brawler genre. I guess Golden Axe kind of did that.

But this was much more of like, here is, you know, kind of putting. a foot down in the same area that games like Final Fight have staked out and really made a name for itself just right away. Yeah, so one thing, and I did a video on Streets of Rage 4 recently, and one of the ideas I sort of considered is the three pillars concept for this genre, where you need to, pillar one is feedback and impact, where each punch should feel satisfying. When you hit an enemy, that basic attack needs to feel great. And if it doesn't, you don't, you don't have much of a game there, right? And then pillar two is music. You need very catchy music because the game is, you know, in its rawest form, the brawler is a very repetitive

genre. So you need something to sort of drive the action that comes from the music. And then the final pillar, of course, is the presentation where you need those sharp, colorful visuals and sort of a style to pull you into that world. And if you have those three elements nailed down, you have the beginnings, or at least the foundation of a very solid game. And anything else is just sort of improving upon that. And that's something I think that Streets of Rage in particular does exceptionally well. I agree. So let's talk about the origins of Streets of Rage. This is a Sega game.

And when I say Sega game, I mean, it's actually a Sega game. It's made by people internally at Sega, which was not always the case, especially once you got into the Genesis era, Mega Drive era, they really started farming games out a lot more than they did during the master system era. but this was created internally, I guess, A.M., which division was it? Do you know? Oh, geez. I don't remember specifically at that. Yeah, I wasn't able to find a specific division. So maybe they didn't have one at that point. This was before Sonic the Hedgehog or right around the time, so they didn't even really have Sonic team.

But there's a great pedigree here. The director and designer of the game is Noriyoshi Oba, who worked on Revenge of Shinobi, Shinobi 3, Dark Wizard, Climbabye, clockwork night and produced Skies of Arcadia. So he definitely had some action game cred under his belt around this time, working on the Shinobi games. The other, the co-director, co-designer is Hiroki Chino, who had worked on ESWAT. And his only other credit beyond that is Sonic CD.

So kind of, I didn't really read up a lot on his career, but it seems like he was there for some kind of big games and then just dropped off. And then the wizard kind of holding everything together. is, of course, Uso Koshiro of Ancient. I think this was right around the time that Ancient was founded because they established Ancient as a studio to create Sonic for Master System. So, Game Gear, yeah.

So this was right around the time they were doing that. So he was kind of weaving his way into Sega and becoming like a key team player with the company right around this time. And I would have to think that the work that he produced for Streets of Rage is, you know, like that's got to look good on your resume. Like, you go to Sega and say, hey, you know, we want, we want to work on your key property here and produce a port of it. And they're like, well, your music was the greatest thing ever, so go right ahead. So overall, yeah, Streets of Rage was produced by a small team looking at Moby games.

There were a total of nine people credited if you don't count the special thanks because who knows what special things means. Like, hey, thanks for bringing me coffee that one. one day that we were, you know, too slam to go out. You know it helps, right? I mean, but, you know, a very small team, really. I mean, by this point, you know, 16-bit era, teams were starting to expand in size. So this was more like the kind of team size you would have seen more in the 8-bit era. So a very lean economical production.

And I think that really shows through in the game. Like, you know, compared to a lot of brawlers, this is very lean and economical. It's very no nonsense. It's just like good meat and potatoes punching, like you are the meat and the bad guys are the potatoes and you're, I don't know. Anyway, so just a really great inspired production came out in Japan in August of 1991 and then was released in the U.S. the following month and Europe the month after that. So very quick localization turnaround on those as Sega usually tended to do because they, you know, really, especially during the Mega Drive era, really relied on. the popularity of their franchises outside of Japan and recognized the enthusiasm of their audience and other territories. So they really catered to them more so than did like NAC, Hudson or

Nintendo at the time. The sort of strip back small team, I think I agree, it is kind of reflected in the game, not that that's a comment on the quality, obviously. But especially when you look at, even in Streets of H2, it's so much more simple and so just kind of pure. When you've got this sort of grimy, gritty aesthetic, it just carries you through this sort of the whole game. It's this beautiful, sort of unpretentious thing, which I really do kind of value. You don't have that, you know, there aren't that many moves

unless I somehow missed some of them. It's, I think it's pretty much just sort of your basic combos, your jump attacks. And there is some of the tech there. The throws are in there, and you can do the sort of safe landing when you get thrown by an enemy. But other than that, I couldn't find much in the way of potential, I suppose.

There is also the thing that they scrapped, which is the call the cops button, where you press the A button, a sort of backup car arrives, and seems to launch some sort of small warhead into the middle of the city streets, killing every enemy on the screen, which is just monstrous.

But, you know, these are streets of rage. They're not streets of peaceful coexistence. Yeah, that's before they added the special I mean, you know, rather than doing a special punch that drains your life, you hit the C button and it brings in the cop car and he launches that warhead. You've got, I think it's, I think it's one per life or one per stage if you don't lose a life, basically. Yeah, that's right. It's fairly limited.

Yeah, it is useful and it isn't just another little thing to throw in. But they didn't use that in, I think, well, I know it wasn't in two. I don't think it was in three either. No. I think the issue with it is that it just means that you can't use it very often, so you're limited to the very simplistic sort of combo system that they've implemented, which is fun, of course, but the action's a little one note. Yeah, it's not bad, but it is very basic,

especially when you see where they went with it, basically. Once that move was off that button, they were able to implement two special moves per character, which just adds a lot more kind of combo potential and makes the gameplay that much richer. So, yeah, to your point, Stuart, it feels like Sega was establishing a baseline for the series for the genre and just kind of getting the basics correct. But that's important. Like, so many brawlers were released in the wake of Final Fight and Double Dragon, and so many of them were just trash. They're just not fun to play at all. And I, you know, I sank plenty of quarters and tokens into those and rented a few for Super NES.

And, yeah, generally they were just tedious, boring, repetitive, and didn't have a good feel to them. And they got all those things right here. They, you know, even though this is, as John said, kind of a repetitive genre by nature, you don't really feel that in this game. You're always kind of moving forward. The scenery is always changing. It's always cool. Yeah. And the combat feels good.

I had to run through it yesterday, sort of brush up on it. And the, I think it's staged, I'm not sure if it's three or four, but you're walking by the ocean and it's, the waves are just kind of crashing up. Yeah, I love that. Every few seconds. And then every, like, just every so often throughout the stage, there'll be sort of a big wave and you'll just get this kind of surf rain down on you. And it's fantastic. It's like there's no need for it. It's just this great bit of added flavor that they threw in because it was atmospheric and there's no other reason.

You know, it's not like, do you play something like, I don't know, I don't even know what these kind of, so good contemporaries worth. I don't know, like two crude dudes and things like that. Yeah, or even licensed ones like The Tick or Beebe's Kids or something. You know, like, the only other one I know on Sega was DJ Boy, and that wasn't very good at all. No, I mean, Sega had golden accents, Trees of Rage and everything else was just kind of, you know. It's just a step above, really. That's how it, that is how it feels.

The way it's paced and the fact that the levels always seem to end right when you're thinking, I'm getting a bit fed up with this. which I think is great Streets of Rage 1 of course the stages are correct me if I'm wrong on this I don't think they have kind of multiple boards at least for the first few

because you're basically just going through say the first level is the street and the second level is a different street and then the boss will just show up at some point in the later games it would be like you fight through the streets into a bar and then out the back of the bar Well that's a really important point actually

because in Streets of Rage 1 it always scrolls left to right with the exception of that elevator but the levels themselves never really change you're just on the one screen you move all the way until the end you fight a boss and then it's the next stage where like you say in the later games they'll sometimes scroll the screen in different directions

within one map they're changing up the map layouts completely like going into different environments so there's a lot more variety there but still I think like you said that it's that atmosphere that they really captured like each stage like of course walking by the ocean front or when you're

that sort of like ship or pier, I guess it is, and you can kind of see the city in the background with the lights flicting in the water. Like, there's just something about it that really channels that 90s atmosphere that I think really holds up well. Yeah, it's really striking visually still. Sega had a bit of a form for that,

I'd say, back in the day, especially with the backgrounds and their games. It seems and stuff like, if you stop and you just, I remember recently playing, for example, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, on the chemical plant stage, or the casino stage, if you just stop, and look at the background and just realize how insanely detailed it is.

Oh, yeah. It's the same in Streets of Rage, and it's pretty impressive stuff, I think. So fundamentally, this was pretty much a straightforward take on the Double Dragon Final Fight Playbook. It was a two-player brawler across eight stages with a boss at the end of each one, a big cheap final boss at the very end of the game. And even though it was two-player simultaneous, you could choose from three different characters. So there was that little splash of variety to it where each character played a little differently, had their own kind of specialization, and you could kind of mix things up. So it wasn't always like, okay, you be the girl, I'll be the boy, and we'll always play this way.

You could have the boxer, the karate guy, or the judo girl. And that gave it some variety, although I haven't played these enough to really get a sense of how the characters are different from one another. So what distinguishes Adam from Axel from Blaze? I mean, that's something that becomes much more noticeable in the sequels. But here in this one, there's this, there's some slight differences in the way their moves play out and with reach and just the general feel. But you're right. I mean, in this first game, they all feel relatively similar and they all share the same basic special attack with the police cruiser. So there isn't actually that much to differentiate them, I feel, overall.

No, they do feel sort of very similar. It's the fact that I haven't really introduced, like, for example, I don't think Axel has his grand uppert attack yet. No, he doesn't have a yet. Which is like a signature attack. So that's one of the reasons it feels to me so strange going back to this one is the really is just kind of a lack of moves.

I mean, it works because the enemies are quite simplistic by comparison as well. All the boss battles in this game, in my experience, seem to be more, I don't know, not gimmicky, but they all have quite a noticeably less health than they would in the later games. So there isn't really any kind of attrition. It's just you find out what their weak point is and you exploit it. There's a battle with, well, I don't know what his actual name is, but it is the wrestler, the ultimate warrior, it's just him. Oh, yeah. And from what I can tell, the only way you beat him is you jump and kick him in the face repeatedly when he runs at you. There is no other real functional strategy because he'll

always counter you if you try anything else. I mean, I might be mistaken on that point, but that's just how it feels. When you fight him again in the second game, there were more sort of avenues of attack. You have your sweep moves, take out enemies who are crowding you. There's just a lot more variety in general, but in this, it does feel a bit more regimented,

like this is what you have to do. Yeah, and in a way, I think, weirdly enough, I would say Streets of Rage 1 feels like an arcade game brought home, even though it's not, where Streets of 2 and 3 feel like a console game first and you really see that with the nuance and the mechanics so you know it's it's clearly

something where they've learned a lot when moving forward with this but still the original has that sort of basic feel of an arcade game i think I wonder if that's a function of the first game having been developed by Sega, who's, you know, who's bread and butter, whose specialty was the arcade. Like, that's what they did so well. Whereas, you know, the Streets of Age 2 especially has, like, four different teams work, or, like, you know, people from four different companies working on it who were much more, home-based, you know, more focused on the console market. So yeah, they definitely brought some

diversity to it. And the through line there, the connecting tissue between Streets of Rage 1 and the Streets of Rage 2 team is Yuzo Koshiro, because Ancient stepped in, his newly founded company, his freshly minted development studio, stepped in to be kind of do the heavy lifting on Streets of Rage 2. But again, he brought so much to Streets of Rage just in the soundtrack. I mean, You have to keep in mind, he was like 20 years old at the time. Yeah, he's a pretty young dude. He got his start in, you know, composing video game soundtracks professionally as a teenager on PC88 and other, you know, Japanese home computers. And that was in like 1986 or so.

And by this point, you know, he'd worked out with Falcom and so forth and went out on his own as a freelancer and established his own company. You know, I think he was 21 when he founded Ancient. So he was, you know, barely legal. like barely young enough to legally go to clubs and hang out at night. But he was a, you know, a kid into music and that's what he did. Like he brought the influence of the nightclubs and, you know, just the, the dance halls and whatever that he enjoyed visiting in his free time. He brought that influence into this game.

And so you have a soundtrack that is instead of being, I think a lot of the brawlers that you played around this time tended to have kind of that Capcom cheesy, like heavy metal hard rock guitar sound to them, which is, you know, that's, that's its thing. Lots of Japanese games have that, especially from Capcom. That's what they like. And this was just something totally different. It was electronic, techno, much more rhythm, like, you know, oriented around kind of the groove

and the rhythm of the music, as opposed to just the melody. I think that's really interesting because I feel like this is something Sega in general was really good at in the early 90s. was sort of channeling alternative music tastes and genres into their game music. You saw it here, of course, with users work. You saw it in Sonic CD where they went really crazy with the sampling and everything like that. The Sonic series in general was very poppy, and it has connections to real musicians as well. And I guess you could even argue something like Michael Jackson, Moonwalker, but, you know, that's a totally different thing.

Or Outrun, where they're like, hey, let's have a racing game with Calypso. Yeah, Calypso. Or something like Galaxy Force 2, where the first stage is like this massive track that goes on for, I don't know, like eight minutes or something. It's incredible. I love it. Yeah. So this really does embody like everything that made Sega Sega around this time. And it just, it does it so well that, you know, I think it was, I don't know the numbers on it.

And again, I kind of missed out on the Streets of Rage thing when it was new. But I feel like it was a pretty significant hit. and definitely inspired a sequel, which shipped just a little more than a year later, Streets of Rage 2. And that's where everything really came together and became amazing. Well, I kind of feel like before we get to Streets of Rage 2, though, we should touch on the portable and master system versions.

Oh, right. Yes, yes. Okay, yes. We did mention that before. Please elucidate. So obviously, the Game Gear was launched in 1992. And so this was well after the release of Streets of Rage 1.

And they wanted a version of Streets of Rage 1. And they wanted a version of Streets of Rage 2. And they wanted a version of Streets of Rage for that system, and it was developed. But usually when there's Master System and Game Gear versions, you find that they're the same game. It's just a resolution difference. But in this case, that's not actually the case, and the Game Gear and Master System versions are unique. On the Game Gear side, they got rid of Adam, unfortunately, has fewer levels. It doesn't feel as polished.

But, curiously, it actually does have two-player support via the link cable, which is, you know, I think that's a really cool feature for a portable game and something that is lacking from the Master System version which is actually just single player only but the main issue with this with these versions of the game especially in Master System is that they completely

fail to capture that sense of impact. The act of simply attacking your enemies feels terrible the collision detection is wrong it kind of feels like you can punch a guy from across the stage almost most of the hits you'll perform there's a large gap between you and the enemy.

So they're either too far away or they're overlapping your character and the game sort of flickers back and forth rapidly between the two sprites, which never feels good. And these complaints kind of applied to both in a way, but I do think the Game Gear version plays somewhat better. The frame rate is lower than master's system,

but it doesn't have all the flicker issues and the collision while still poor. It's okay. So in a sense, though, seeing this on a portable system, I think, back in 1992 was still an impressive thing, so to speak. You know, it's a full-color portable system. Having a brawler at all like this, especially with two-player support, was really cool, I think. Yeah, Game Boy sure did not offer anything comparable to this. No, exactly. So even though it is a far cry from the Sega

Mega Drive version, I do think it's a really solid portable release, but the master system version can definitely be ignored. But before any of those released, that's where we get to Streets of Rage 2. Okay, so Streets of Rage 2 came before the home conversions, or the portable, like the 8-bit conversions of Streets of Rage 1. Yeah. Okay. So, Streets of Rage 2, this is kind of the big one. Like I said, it was released December 1992 in Japan and then the following month in both the U.S. and Europe, again, a very short turnaround time.

And while SIGA was obviously involved in the production of this one, the main world. The main work on it was done by external studios, primarily ancient, but also a company called Shout Design Works, and then to a lesser degree, a company called M in M. And each of those brought, okay, so the main talent from ancient was, of course, Yuzo Koshiro, who co-wrote the music this time with Motohiro Kawashima. And then a ton of the art and planning was produced by his sister Ayano. And she, She worked on planning, which in a lot of Japanese games around this time, kind of means directing, like the kind of overall design of the game and direction over how it plays out. She worked on object design, main design. So I take that to mean, like, visual design to a certain degree, like the overall design, like visual design and aesthetic.

On the shout design work side, you had Akitoshi Kawano, the main programmer. And this game was 60 frames for second, right? yeah it definitely is so that's that is his contribution to the game uh and then also from shout you have kataru ichimura who worked on the planning and the system design so kind of right up there with uh yano koshiro and then mikito ichikawa from m in im mm okay there we go yes like the candy and the rapper uh he was also a planner he or she i'm not sure if mikito is male female. Anyway, um, yes, planning. So a lot of people planning this game, a lot of directors, but despite the fact that there were many, many chefs in the kitchen, the soup turned out

perfectly. I want to interject real quick before we go on. I was a little bit off on the Streets of Rage 8-bit version. They came out around the same time. So I suspect the plan was to release that 8-bit conversion around the time of Streets of Rage 2 and to sort of make sure that they had one for both portable system and the home console. So that's more likely how that plan played out. Okay. That's fine. We don't have to be 100% specific.

This is not a chronological exploration of a game system's library. That's someplace else. I've just used to comments below videos that will very quickly let you know if you make one little error like that. So you've got to make sure you shore every one of them up. Yeah, yeah. Fortunately, you don't have to worry about that sort of thing on podcast. It's much harder to do those comments.

We don't have a comment system. I'm here. I can throw some abuse out if you like. Yes, absolutely. No, there was a question doing around on Twitter recently. I swear this is relevant, which is basically what's the best direct sequel to a game ever. And I didn't think about it at the time for some reason, but it might be this, honestly. The sheer escalation from Street of Rage 1 in every single department is astonishing. It's astonishing that it's the same console that it's running on to me.

It's a game that's so impressive and it's so perfectly paced and it looks incredible. It sounds incredible and it plays beautifully into player with either no slowdown or next to no slowdown the whole time. Always something new to see around every corner. It's an amazing game. And I don't know how they did it. It's like witchcraft. And that is the laziest, most cliche thing to say about the development of a video game, which is very hard to do. To just say, no, they did it with magic.

Magic is responsible. But everything about it, like the fact that, okay, for a start, they got rid of Adam again, unfortunately. Well, I say got rid of him. There was a plot reason for that, but it was still kind of a lame one. He got kidnapped, I think. Yeah, he kind of got poochied in this. They replaced him with his younger brother, Eddie, whose nickname is Skates, and he's the very early 90s character here. Oh, yeah.

I mean, the first start, you've got that. And with Axel, Blaze, Max, who. who's the big luchador, well, wrestler chap, basically, is the big heavy character. And skates, which you mentioned, now these characters play and feel sort of different. I mean, for me, Axel and Blaze are, well, they're not the same. They have totally different movesets now, but they're similar, I think, in field. But Max is your, is your Hager, Mayor Hager guy, I think. And skates, for a start, he can run with a double tap.

Well, he can skate, he can move fast, he can jump up on enemy's heads, and then jump from their heads onto other enemy heads and that sort of thing. He's much more agile. So for a start, every character feels very distinct, very different. They can work together really nicely with a second player. Gosh, I don't just want to ramble on and on about how brilliant it is what I could do. No, no, that's what this episode is for. You kind of hit on one of the main things with the running feature of skates where basically they add a double tap to the game.

And it's sort of a game changer where every character, if you double tap the direction and hit the action button, and you'll get sort of a special attack and not the type of special that drains your life. It just executes like the grand upper with Axel or you can double tap and run and Blaze can sort of like fly across the screen and it just makes the game feel much more active and fast and you can really play with combos now

where one of the issues with a lot of these brawlers is you walk up to a guy, you hit him a few times, he falls in the ground, what do you do? You wait. You have to wait for him to get up or you take on another enemy. But here, depending on how you, play with your attacks you can do a few light punches to drain their life just a bit but if you staggered enough they won't fall down and then you go into like a grand upper or something like that and you can take out their entire life bar in one combo without knocking them down and that type of strategy plays well into the overall flow of the game and that was also carried over to the special move which they got rid of the police car which in retrospect when you would press that the entire game would freeze for a few seconds as the screen scrolled

over shows the animation it clears the screen then you're back to the action where with this game this special is simply uh sort of a powerful move that drains a little bit of your health when you use it but you can sort of integrate it into combos so it's very useful for sort of increasing your attack power especially when facing off against a boss and as you learn the game you begin to understand okay there is uh i guess a roast turkey in this barrel or an apple in this barrel which by the way we didn't mention, but that was something from Final Fight as well. They loved to just hide large pieces of meat inside random barrels and other objects around the world. And that's how you...

Oh, I found meat in the trash bin. I should eat this and feel better. Exactly. And it works, I guess. So, but yeah, if you time your special move around those items, you can ensure that you're dealing maximum damage and without, you know, dealing with a lot of down enemies and whatnot. So it's really, there's a lot of extra strategy there on that sense, especially when you have two players in the mix due to the variation in character types. So that idea of sort of, you know, using light attacks to keep enemies from being downed

kind of reminds me of what Technos did with Double Dragon for NES, except there you did that as kind of like an exploit of the weird experience leveling system they added. So you wanted to just like farm as much experience out of an enemy as you possibly could, without downing them. So that actually didn't make the game better. It just meant that you, like, spent the early stages, just, you know, like giving Williams and Linda love taps and then moving back so they wouldn't fall down

and just continue to do it so you'd get more experience. And then finally, when you're about to run out of time, you knock them down and move on. Whereas here, that's actually, like, fun and good and interesting as opposed to, well, time to grind out to level three. Exactly. Besides the sort of the single tap system, It's fun, just everything about the base fighting is more fun and more interesting.

They've added, other than the double tap moves, there's also a move where I believe you hold the B button and release it after a second or so. You'll do it with Axel, for example, you do a quick double kick. If you're holding the B button and then you press the C button, you'll do a back attack if anyone's sneaking up on you, that sort of thing. Yeah, I was just going to mention that. I love that stuff. It's just, it's so much more rewarding, it's much more interesting, and the potential is much higher. it being, I would say, overwhelming or confusing. It's just a really accessible, really fun

belt-scroller. It's awesome. And I think it's a genuine leap over just about anything else in the arcades in that way. Because most arcade games, most arcade brawlers, they were very simplistic. It was based on a small set of moves. It was simply about pumping in quarters

to get to the end. Where what Streets of Rage 2 really does well is it creates a game that is very balanced for home play. If you're a skilled player, you can get through it. It's not a game that just eats, continues, or, you know, virtual quarters, I guess you could say in this way, where if you're playing well and you utilize your full moveset, you can get through these stages without losing any lives. That is absolutely possible, whereas I feel if you're playing something like the Turtles games in the arcade, for instance, you just get destroyed by the enemy at some points. There are cheap bosses.

There's cheap enemies, and it's difficult to avoid. taking damage. That's not the case here. And I think that's one of the key things combined with the additional complexity of the move set that makes the game so compelling to play. Yeah, I feel like developers in this era initially tried to think, like, how can we take this arcade genre and make it good and, you know, viable on a console? So you did get things like the Double Dragon Experience system. You got things like River City Ransom. But after a while, I feel like they just kind of didn't bother to really apply a lot of intellectual rigor to the idea that, you know, arcades and consoles are different. So let's just slap the arcade game into the console.

People are going to buy it anyway. Who cares? And you did tend to get a lot of home games that were very shallow, very unsatisfying. And, you know, I feel like, yeah, this is one of the first, maybe the very few games to really get that right. And I feel like this was very influential on the developers who actually did care. I mean, if you look at the Final Fight sequels for Super Nias that came after this, Final Fight 2 and 3, like Final Fight 3 was like 1996. It came really late.

They actually do take a lot of notes from Streets of Rage, two and three both, and try to add in more, you know, more complexity and nuance to make the game something other than just the sort of brainless disappointment that the first final fight for Super NES was. But unfortunately, you know, despite that, I feel like there weren't a lot of developers who really looked at this and said, oh, that's what you do. They were just like, ah, just slap some sprites in there, ship it, and we'll move on to the next thing. Something this game did that I feel is missing from a lot of games in this genre is it kind of told stories, really sort of small stories, which I really liked. I mean, there is a plot, sort of, but that's not what I mean. It's more like, as I mentioned earlier, the first stage of Streets of Rage 2, you'll move through the streets, down into a, and then you'll go into a bar. Before you go into the bar, though, there's a minibus, a chap with a knife, basically, and that's another thing that there was. don't think there were minibuses in the first game at all. It would just be straightforward. Here's

the final boss. Anyway, you beat him up, go into this bar. The music changes completely at this point. You got a whole new song with this kind of nice jazzy vibe to it. As you move through there, you'll see the bartender, and after a little while, you of you destroying his bar, he'll leave out of the back. It just happens in the background. And then you'll go out into the back, into this like rain-swept alleyway behind this bar and as you kind of approach the bartender who's standing there he'll like I think he just like rips his shot off and then starts just just meeting you senses and the way it's timed out as you walk out it's just silent all you can hear is the rain and then that amazing what's it called never return alive that theme

I think so the boss theme kicks in fantastic right as he comes at you and I've got goosebumps like just talking about how this because it's that that good. I'm feeling the same way right now. Exactly. They really knew how to build up the atmosphere around the world. It's a simple game, but it's so atmospheric and rich feeling. And every scenario they set up was just awesome. And yeah, it's this mix of crazy characters, the actual enemies that they throw into the mix the way they introduce them. It adds a lot to the game, I think. The addition, as you move through, like, it's one of the most telling things about Streets of Roach 2 is I could probably remember

every level and every scenario in order. But there's just so many memorable moments and even tiny little touches. There's a stage where you go through a park and, for example, there's one of the Galcia enemies is just like resting, he's just lying on the bench. And as you approach him, he gets up and sort of comes at you. It sounds so minor, but it just adds

that little bit more richness to the game. I also love the baseball field. You go walking through sort of the entryway and then you get actually out onto the field. They have the do baseball posters everywhere, which I always thought was funny. And then after a while, you end up on, I guess, the pitcher's mound, and it turns out to be this secret underground elevator that lowers down. And it's just, they love to do this stuff.

And the way the stages progress, every stage is composed of multiple pieces. And that's, that really adds a lot to the experience. You've got just, yeah, things like the pitchers mound. elevator, which is just such a great surprise. There's so much more enemy variety as well, and interesting enemies. I think there are sort of sumos, those big fat fire breathing guys who I believe are actually

just an evolution of a boss from the first game. There are returning enemies as well, but they've all been given new moves. Actually, that brings up an interesting thing before we continue there. Is the AI of the enemies, is something very specific to streets of rage. If you watch them,

they sort of circle around the player, right? Most of the enemies they don't just make a B-line towards you. You'll see them sort of move in, go around the player, sort of, there's actually like real strategy there when you watch them in action. Whereas if you go and play final fight, most of the enemies, while they do hold back in a similar way, when they come for you, they come straight at you in sort of a B-line.

And it's this weird way that the enemies move around the player that makes Streets of Rage feel so unique, I think. Yeah, it all just comes together so nicely. Something we didn't mention about the first one, which I think is also in the second one, which we maybe should have. As you approach the final boss, I think it's Mr. Big in the first game. Yeah. When you meet him, if you're playing with two players, there's the option to join him or not, basically. It's in one player as well.

It is. Sorry, yes. I know that there's a scenario which ends up with you fighting the other player. Oh, okay. That's a different thing. Yeah, yeah. You're right. And then you're fighting for the right to be his right hand, basically, which is a really good one.

cool little twist. I think in single player it's more like if you choose one of the options he opens up the floor and you fall back a couple levels prior. But just with Streets of Ridge 2 the sort of almost Saturday morning kind of cartoon feel which

has really helped along by the fidelity of the sprites which are now much bigger and more expressive and better as you go up this kind of final elevator and you're making way towards Mr. X, the final boss and he's got his right-hand Shiva, who's a recurring character in the series,

who's just intimidating as hell even to fight. And fighting that boss is almost more difficult than the final boss, I would say. But the final boss is extremely scary because he's got a machine gun and you're not supposed to have those in brawlers. That's cheating. I also love how his arena is set sort of at, I guess, dawn.

The sun is coming up in the background, which it's an interesting contrast against the night-soaked world that you've been working your way through although I guess the beach stage is sort of at so maybe this is actually at dusk I don't know it's a sunset it looks cool it's a very busy night for our

yeah they've been at it all night you know but as you go through it escalates when you start fighting hopping like robots molecule and particle it just gets really strange basically and more silly and cartoonish oh yes In the sort of spookhouse area that you go through

And then at the end you fight a weird cross between Vega and Blanca Really, really just an odd game But a good one See, this is the thing I can't talk about this without just gushing about All these memorable things in it It's just one of those games

To me it really is just It's top three for Mega Drive And for 16 bit probably period It's just excellent It's probably the best brawler That exists in the 16 bit era for me. It's spectacular. Arcade or otherwise. It's that

and then told us in time for SNAS, it's like right below it. Yeah, that's really good as well. But of course, I mean, one of the main draws to Streets of Rage is we've been dancing around here is the music, of course. Okay, good. I was just about to say. Yes. So they obviously Yuzo Koshiro returned, but alongside Motohiro Kawashima.

And, man, I mean, you guys know. I mean, this soundtrack is legendary. It is. Just the most brilliant collection of dance beats and just sound and the soundscape that they create here, unbelievable, I think. Yeah, you know, this was one of the very first releases that data disks put out on vinyl. And when you sit down and listen to it that way, like, you really have to stop and remind yourself, this is coming out of a Sega Genesis. This is coming out of a 16-bit video game system. They recorded this from the soundboard of a video game console.

It's just, it's inexplicable. I mean, you know, audio quality became sort of a trivial non-factor once CDs came into the picture because then you could just have streaming Redbook audio. But when you were, you know, listening to the chip tunes of the Genesis era, the Mega Drive era, it was a different, it was a different factor altogether. Like, it was a different story. And it's just the, the quality of the sound that's coming out of the Genesis is really just kind of hard to wrap your head around. sounds like nothing else on the system.

And that's not a dig at the Genesis's sound processor. It's just whatever alchemy was in play here created something totally unique and that really it transcends the hardware. Yeah, see, that's what's interesting about this hardware. And what I really appreciate about it is that it sort of separates the best musicians or programmer musicians from the rest because you have to balance the FM synth element with the PSG channels with the PCM samples as well

and it's very important like he uses these really crisp drum samples I think that are PCM based and it's managing that is difficult in the system you need to have both high quality samples plus the programming knowledge to actually implement them so they play back correctly which was a problem that some developers ran into

and somehow they were able to utilize all these different audio bits together to create this wonderful soundscape. And it's really just, it's a statement of both musical talent, musical excellence, and programming excellence, I think. It's on a sort of more basic sort of level, the original Streets of Rage, the soundtrack, as good as it is, it has a very consistent, I think, kind of a house sound to it. Yeah. It's a little bit stripped back.

And in Streets of Rage, too, you've got, God. you've got techno, you've got sort of R&B, there's kind of darker sort of pop stuff, there is some New Jack Swing stuff in there as well, there's some sort of hard trance as well towards the end with songs like Expander, and there are just, there are so many songs in the game. And this is a soundtrack that gets sampled by contemporary charting musicians, even relatively recently. I know I heard Expander more or less directly in a De Antward's song not that long ago. They just used it because that's how influential and memorable it really is. It's just an astonishing soundtrack. I'm no expert on the Mega Drive sound chip. I just know

I get cross when people say it's bad. But when it's being used by skilled, well, musicians, it can put out some amazing stuff. The song Expander I've already mentioned. I've never heard anything like that in any other Mega Drive game that I can think of. Have you listened to Savage Regime, way. I don't think so. I should link you to some of his tracks, but he's a modern musician that's creating music for the system and the stuff coming out of there. If other musicians were able to produce music of that quality during this era, I think the story around the soundship would be very different. But this is one of the few games that comes close to that quality of music during the time of release.

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Oh, Lassie, we don't need to rescue Timmy. He likes the well, well enough, I guess. Darth Vader is Luke's father. Lassie, I told you to play off the spoilers. So, Streets of Rage 2, a masterpiece on every front. Now we move on to Streets of Rage 3, which I'm actually going to be curious to hear your takes on this, because most of what I hear about Streets of Rage 3 is the music is bad, and also they change the stereotype character.

That's all anyone ever really says about it. Sorry, were you going to say something, John? I did want to insert, once again, there were eight-bit conversions of Streets of Rage 3rd Rage 2. Okay. And, well, the Game Gear version was much better. The Game Gear version of Streets for H2 is actually quite good. It's not as good as the original, of course, on the Mega Drive, but it's a very competent

portable brawler, and I think it's one of the best brawlers from that era that you could actually play on any portable system. So in that sense, it was a huge success. The master system version, unfortunately, was, again, a different product, and no word near is good, but an improvement from Streets of Rage 1. But yeah, we don't need to go into more detail on them. Just know that they existed. They came later, and they were okay, especially on the game gear.

So Streets of Rage 3 did not get 8-bit conversions. Is that correct? It did not. I believe so. Okay. Yes. So Streets of Rage 3 came more than a year after Streets of Rage 2, and I feel like a lot had changed by the time this shipped.

in March 94 in Japan, June 94 in the rest of the world. The brawler had really started to fade away. Street Fighter 2 had been a huge hit in 1991, 92, and then Mortal Kombat had followed. And then at that point, everyone either wanted to be Street Fighter 2 or Mortal Kombat. And so you had games like the King of Fighters, Fatal Fury, on the kind of like, let's be Street Fighter side, also Fighter's History. And then on the Let's Be Mortal Kombat side,

you had stuff like Primal Rage, Kasumi Ninja. Not necessarily the best things in the world. But basically, if you went into an arcade, what you saw was fighting games. Whereas, you know, when Streets of Rage first came out, when the original came out, if you went into an arcade, what you saw was brawlers everywhere. So there was definitely, there had definitely been a sea change for the genre. And at the same time, I feel like this kind of liberated the team at Sega and ancient to be more experimental with this game.

And it's definitely experimental on a lot of fronts. It's also, I would say by far, the most console game-like entry in the Streets of Rage series with splitting paths and multiple endings and, you know, lots of replay incentive, basically. Unlockable characters. It really, it feels like this is kind of their final statement for the series, kind of like, you know,

Fantasy Star 4 was sort of the final statement for the 16-bit fantasy star games. It was just like, let's get everything in here. So, you know, it's very impressive in that regard, but not every experiment that they tried necessarily went over well. And I mentioned that there was a character excised. They cut a character out. There's a character named Ash who is very much your sort of like the sort of stereotypical homosexual character you see in, especially in Japanese media a lot. Yeah, he's a straight-up village people. Yeah.

It's really quite questionable. And he is unlockable and playable in the Japanese version. In the American and European versions, they were like, you know, let's not. Well, he's an enemy at the end of stage one as well. Right, but even then they changed his outfit, didn't they? Exactly. They removed him from the American version. Yeah, I think in the American one, they changed him to Shiva in the first stage.

Yeah, I think so. Who is also an unlockable character, incidentally. got it um the thing i found quite interesting because i was surprised that they allowed it was uh if you buy the um the current i can't what it's cool because there are so many of them and they put them out every generation the current Sega megadrive collection i think it might just be called Sega Genesis collection actually i believe so yeah because you can switch region on every game on that collection you can actually play bare knuckle three and play with ash and all of those sensibly removed things so the option is still there which surprised me a little bit to be

honest, because you'd think they'd want to bury that as far below the ground as possible in 2020, you know, whenever it came out. But no, there is. It's right there. I mean, for me, with Streets of Race 3, it's one of those games that when you sort of look at it, it is good. You can't really argue it's not impressive, but it's too much stuff for me. It's too much. It's too many eggs. This is an interesting one. This is a game I've played a lot over the years. and I've sort of, it's one of those things where, you know, where you would get like an album, the first time you'd listen to it, you think, eh, that's just okay. But then you keep listening to it. And over time, you start to discover sort of an inner beauty to that music. And it really grows on you. And that's exactly what happened with this game, especially playing the Japanese version, Bear Knuckle 3, which has a lot of differences, not just in terms of cut content, but actual balancing as well. Yeah, there are bosses that have, I think, multiple fewer health bars, even. Yeah, exactly.

Is that right? Was it one of those games? Was it because of the rental market that they didn't want people beating the game or something? I can't say, you know, it's hard to say for certain, but you're right. This released in that 94 window when a lot of games brought to the West had this exact change made. Dynamite Hetty was like that, Contra the Hardcore, tons of others. They just made them extra difficult when they brought them west. and I'm fairly certain it was to combat the rental market

That's not to say that the game is necessarily It's a little easy on the default setting in Japan But you can crank it up and there's a good challenge there But what I feel this game does really well is There's a few things First there's the mechanics themselves Which I think are actually the best in the series First of all everybody can run now

Which massively speeds up the pace of the game They change the way the super's work It has a recharging bar that when you use your super if that bar is full it does not drain your life. Once you perform the action though the bar begins to fill up again but you can still use

your super before it's filled up and then it drains your life and I feel like this adds an extra element of strategy to the game that works rather well overall and it's just it's a faster more it has a great feel to it that I really like

and I also appreciate just the insanity of the backgrounds. You go to so many different places in this game and it really feels like this experiment of what they can do on the platform that I can really get behind. It just looks cool, I think. I've never liked it as much as two. Possibly because of raw nostalgia for two, honestly, because I didn't play three until it was on either the Japanese Sight Jems collection or something. Maybe it was just on an emulator or something. But, uh, For me, it feels like a bit too...

It just feels like a sort of an overstretch. I mean, the American version is much more heavily flawed for me because everything just takes too long to do, which... So I wouldn't recommend playing that version at all, given that you can play Benacle 3 now on the Switch or the PS4. But stuff like the branching paths is not a bad idea in theory, but it doesn't...

I don't really... I don't really see what it adds to a game like this. The pacing seems to be a little messed up. For me, little things like, and this probably sounds petty and personal, but the fact that the first level has enemies with handguns to me is wrong. It's incorrect. It's like, no. I don't know. I think that works.

It feels like the mob coming in to clean up. You know what I mean? It's like, you have all these thugs, and then it's just the mafia rolls up, and they're like, no, this is over. Pull out the guns. I feel like I should put more time into it because I feel like if I did give it more time, it would grow on me quite significantly. That does tend to happen with sort of older games like this.

But my immediate sort of response to it is usually sort of like, okay, so you can do all this new stuff. I think they added six-button controller compatibility with extra moves as well. I think there are some extra special moves you can do. I'm not really sure what the conditions of those are, though. The thing is, I didn't know what that blue bar was for. Now I know, so thank you, John. I honestly had no idea what that was doing. I thought that was something to do with those extra moves you could pull off.

but now I know that it's letting you use the specials without draining health, which is definitely going to help me play it. You know, it makes the game very different. Yeah. The whole game has a very, even more sort of esoteric and kind of crazy feel to me than Streets of H-2 with, for example,

Dr. Zan, who's the sort of cybernetically enhanced stereotype character, you've got Rue, who is just literally a kangaroo that you can play as. Yeah, I feel like this game, kind of falls prey a little bit to the desire to mix things up, like, well, we've kind of done as much as we can do with, you know, just meat and potatoes type brawling. So now we got to get weird. So, yeah, let's throw in a kangaroo and a cyborg. I actually think that that's part of something that was sort of occurring at large during this time period, especially on this platform.

You look at games like Contra the Hardcore or Vampire Killer, I guess it was Castlevania, Bloodlines. Bloodlines. Those games are great examples of they take in a formula that's well established, but they throw in all these weird, crazy ideas that make the games feel like these strange alternate universe attempts at sort of following up on the originals. And that's exactly what this game has going forward as well. And I kind of, like, I'm with you, Stuart.

I think when I look at all these games here, I do still prefer to overall, because it just feels perfect, but I do appreciate the weird experimental design of Streets of Rage 3 and the fluid gameplay enough where it's up there for me. I can definitely appreciate it. So speaking of experimental, we have to talk about the soundtrack because it's extremely controversial and a composer really trying to push the boundaries and not necessarily landing for everyone. I think the soundtrack for this game is kind of amazing. It's not necessarily the most pleasant to listen to, but knowing the philosophy behind it and the methodology and what he was trying to accomplish. And also looking at the fact that what Koshiro and Kowashima did

with this soundtrack is something that people would adopt as a process, like a creative process, a decade later, two decades later, like it's so innovative, so cutting edge. I don't know that necessarily a video game like this is the right place to push the boundaries of music. It's like, you know, a soundtrack by Brian Eno in 1974, you know? Is that the right fit for a video game soundtrack? I don't know, but it is, like, brilliant and amazing and so daring, and I really, really respect it. And there are some cuts on this track that, or this soundtrack that I'm just like, this is great music. And then others where I'm kind of like, wow, this is, this is, uh, this is sure doing some stuff. Wasn't there a procedural generated element to the soundtrack? I'm

imagining that. Like, the conversations of it. That's exactly correct. So, uh, Koshiro put together a program that basically, from what I understand, he would, he would kind of like put in a beat. He'd like set a rhythm and then the computer would yeah procedurally generate tones it would like it's not like the whole track was procedurally generated but it would come up with melodies and rhythms and you know like musical phrases that in his own words you know no no human would ever come up with so it is this is like the computer is singing to you pretty much it's it is kind of koshero playing and Kawashima also, playing like maestro or composer for an orchestra of Genesis sound chips and like saying, okay, guys, now we improvise, go for it. And so they kind of spin off into this

weird, like extremely harsh electronic sound. But there is still, you know, like that driving beat behind it, that pulsing rhythm. So even though it's strident sometimes and harsh and difficult to listen to, it's still like very intense. And I feel like, usually, you know, Usually the most strident tracks tend to fit. You know, like it should be stressful. It should be intense. And it really puts your kind of nerves on edge when you're facing a difficult boss or something. And the music is just like...

I remember thinking it sounds almost like sort of warp records like Apex Twin sort of square pushers sort of stuff in places. Sega did go back to that a few times notably. But this is probably the most prominent example of it. There's almost kind of breakbeat stuff in there as well. just kind of crazy and different. And I mean, definitely anyone who says it's not interesting is out of their minds. It's crazy stuff. It's a musician's soundtrack, I would say. You can tell that he composed this from the heart. This was something that they were both really enjoying working on, trying new things. They were trying to push boundaries. It wasn't just about creating, well, we need to make

these music tracks for this game. This was, what can we do with music? And I really respect that. Yeah, totally. somewhat divisive game, but I feel like people are coming around to it. I think more has been said by Koshiro about kind of what inspired him and, you know, more people are willing to give it a chance. I really respect the fact that data disks put this out on vinyl, despite its up and down legacy. I did an episode a couple of years ago just focused on this soundtrack and kind of wanted to greater detail there, so you can look that up. But, you know, after this, Sega Genesis, went away, Sega Saturn came along, and Sega itself really kind of changed.

Sega didn't, during the 32-bit era, revisit a whole lot of 16-bit properties. And Streets of Rage is one of those that just went away for 25 years. You got Streets of Rage 3 and then Bubkus. But there was a lot of, there were some attempts or some idle thoughts about bringing the franchise back or, you know, expanding on it. So I know, John, you wanted to talk about that. So by all means, like, what happened during this interregnum between Streets of Rage 3 and 4? Well, to put it simply, I'd say 3D happened. Everybody was moving towards 3D.

That was the new thing. So fighting games had transitioned to 3D. And brawlers, unfortunately, didn't quite make the cut at the time. But they tried. I think one of the first examples of this was Sega's diehard arcade, if you will, dynamite deca, which is a 3D brawling game with a lot of, I guess, scenario-like situations in it where weird things happen between the different rooms. So it's not exactly the same type of game, but it has the spirit of that.

But I think more appropriate is the comparison with a spike-out, which was a Model 3 arcade game, and I don't think it had a Western release at the time. I don't believe so. That one was massively, not massively, but it was much more than just like two-player. are simultaneous, right? Yeah, it was a very strange game. I've only played it a couple times, but I always kind of felt like what they were trying to do there

was channel the spirit of Streets of Rage, even if it didn't fully deliver that same kind of atmosphere, but it definitely feels like an attempt to bring that type of game into it. So there is that as well. So those were kind of two examples of that. And that's not to say that there weren't other brawlers during this generation. I mean,

Treasure, of course, was well known for Guardian Heroes and the Saturn. And even Sega had some Western developed stuff, I think,

like three dirty dwarves, but, you know. I never thought that was a little. Yeah. Yeah, but, you know, in general,

the brawler kind of faded away during this period. I think Stuart, you mentioned fighting force earlier. Yeah, fighting force

is a core design game that was originally going, well, it wasn't going to be it, but it was pitched to Sega as, Hey,

Street of Rage, guys check it out a major problem for this genre at the time in my experience in the UK was anything that even superficially resembled an old game was rubbish now yeah that was just like this is this isn't

wipe out get lost I mean that's the same problem you go back and read magazine articles about Castlevania Symphony the night versus Castlevania 64 and they're all like this old crusty 2D game and we got this 3D over here you know it's that same attitude we mentioned this on the on the Saturn episode

because that's pretty much when it was at its absolute peak. There were official Saturn magazines, Sega Power, things like that, just saying, like, for example, I mean, this isn't a good example because it is not a good game, really, but Mega Man X3, just like, yeah, 1% one out of 100, and to get this 2D off my screen now, basically. And something like Streets of Rage, even when it was in 3D, like, Fighting Force, it was just like, all you're doing this game is beat people up. Like, what's the point? I need to go back through some of those old Sega Saturn magazines because my boss was the editor-in-chief for those.

and I think they were also rather harsh on 2D games, which is a problem when it comes to the brawler because those games were kind of built in that. I don't feel that they really ever worked that well in 3D. They got better, though, when they moved forward to the next generation. There were several brawlers. Like Sega released stuff like zombie revenge, which was silly but fun.

They released a sequel to Dynamite Deca on the Dreamcast as well. But they did actually... Of course, there was the bouncer. sure, don't forget about that one. Oh, yeah. And don't forget Final Fight Street Rise. Oh, I would like to... Yeah, the legacy of Final Fight beyond Final Fight 3 is really a good case for it being wise of

Sega to let Streets of Rage just drop for 25 years because Final Fight's sequels and follow-ups and spinoffs didn't do it any favors. At least they didn't do Final Fight revenge with Streets of Rage. That would have been... There was a brawler for Peeleafers. PS2 by Namco that I've totally forgot the name of that was quite acclaimed, I think. The Nina Williams one? No.

No, this is going to really annoy me now. Is it the first person brother? Urban rain, that's it. Urban rain. Oh, you're thinking of breakdown there for the Xbox. Yeah, breakdown is what I was going to say. But before we even get to any of the PS2 stuff, there was apparently an attempt to revive Streets of Rage on the Dreamcast.

And there is sort of a, I don't want to say prototype, but it's sort of a, I guess, It's a pre-rendered CGI take on what the game could be. And it showcases a mix of 3D, third-person polygonal fighting action combined with first-person sections as well. Which I guess, you know, we saw some of that in Spike Out. But that never really seems to have gotten out of the planning stages. It was just sort of that early test stuff. And as I've heard, Sega of America, which they had a lot of pool at the time,

they weren't exactly into the idea they didn't really respect the legacy of Streets of Rage and in retrospect I'm not sure that releasing that would have necessarily been a great idea it's hard to say whether they could have really pulled it off because I don't think many 3D brawlers really nailed it the same way that those original games did

so in retrospect it's probably not a bad thing that it was cancelled in a way it's a shame because I'd love to have seen a Dreamcast take on that because Sega we're just putting out so many interesting games on that system. See, one of the problems that all of the brawlers faced back then, and this is more of a technical thing, but if you look at what Sega did,

like I mentioned zombie revenge, dynamite, cop two, and all that, due to memory limitations, you couldn't have these long drawn-out stages. So what they had to do was divided up into a series of small areas. So you would say, load a hallway, and then you would load a room. And you were basically moving from little room, room to hallway to room and back again throughout the entire game, which made it feel like

a series of smaller scenarios rather than this big, lengthy brawl like you got in the original games. So I'm not sure they could have actually done it complete justice at this time. Yeah, that was the case even going into the PS2 and the, like, we already mentioned Final Fight Streetwise is a series of small areas. Yeah, exactly. I think even like Godhand was like that as well, wasn't it? I might be wrong about that. Godhand was a little bit more open-ended. It had larger stages, but it was still somewhat split up. So, sort of Streets of Rage kind of disappeared off of the face of the Earth, except for occasionally turning up in compilations.

Though I don't think it did turn up on the PS2. For some reason, I have the idea that it wasn't in the Sega Megadrive collection that came out for PS2, and it didn't turn up until the Japanese Sonic Jems collection for some reason. But then they took it out of the US one, I think, because they wanted a e-rating or whatever the American rating system is, I don't even know. it just sort of disappeared. They weren't re-releasing it for whatever reason.

So you've got like... I mean, I know Axel turned up in Project X-Zone too, but like Project X-Zone is horrible. So I don't... It just seems like such a undignified way to let the series disappear for that sort of period. Yeah, the series re-serviced in, you know, like S.3 collections and beyond that, and then Sega Ages, virtual console. So, you know, after that kind of fallow period,

They started bringing it back. But really, Streets of Rage was kind of kept alive more recently by fan efforts to kind of recapture the spirit. And in fact, that brings us to the sequel, Streets of Rage 4, because one of the key developers on Streets of Rage 4, Guard Crush, kind of cut their teeth and made themselves visible with what was basically a Streets of Rage tribute game called Streets of Fury, which really recaptured the spirit of what made Streets of Rage 2. rate. And, you know, so when Sega was like, eh, let's, let's bring back streets of rage,

but let's not do it ourselves. Let's give it to someone else. They brought in dot MU and Lizard Cube, who did great things together with Wonder Boy, the monster boy, no, Wonder Boy, the Dragon's trap, yes. Monster Boy is something else. It's very confusing. Yeah, that deep dark tumble on and it's still confusing. Yeah. But they were like, oh yeah, dot Emu and Lizard Cube and Guard Crush. And that is where we got Streets of Rage for. So I would like to wrap this episode by just letting you guys talk about your thoughts on Streets of H4. I know, Stuart, you're really big on it. John, where do you stand on Streets of Reach 4?

Oh, I love it. I did a whole video on it. I think it's a perfect follow-up to the original games. I spoke with the developers as well on this, and it's clear just talking to them that they really paid attention to the minutia what made the gameplay in those original games so special, and they made sure to implement it. And they were very quick to answer things like, you know, I wondered the Streets of Rage 3 meter system where you would charge up your special attack. I wondered, okay, how did you go from that to this new method where in Streets of Rage 4, when you use a special attack, it drains a portion of life. But if you can attack an enemy fast enough before taking another hit, it actually fills the life bar back up. And the origin of that was they wanted the sort of lack of penalty that you could get with Streets of Rage 3, but they wanted the sort of lack of,

to ensure that you weren't just watching a meter and they wanted you to remain more active in the game and it actually works. It's a great way to handle specials and the game just flows so well I think that system that you mentioned that sort of almost blood-borne-esque

do a big attack you know that for me it transforms the way you play the game it makes you play so much more aggressively and so much quicker because you don't have to be worrying well I don't know can I use my special or not it's like I can and if I'm skilled enough, it won't matter. I'll be able to get that health back quite quickly.

For that reason, they were able to make the game, among other reasons, they're able to make the game more difficult, I found from the off, more demanding. But the fact is, the tech moves that you can use are a lot more transparent now, like your character will flash when they're ready, that sort of thing. When you're doing a charge attack, for example, the safe landing is still in there. I think they took out the whole thing of everyone running now. I think it's just Cherry who can You can run and jump around now. Plus, you can do aerial specials now as well. They edit a third special to every character.

And they've got in a sort of a form of the screen clearing attacks in the sort of the ones you press Y and B. I don't remember, I think you collect special icons to use those. But basically the systems you have at your sort of disposal is so much more geared towards you getting stuck in and learning how to play the game. They also added in. As opposed to playing conservatively. Exactly. There's also sort of a juggling system in here now. which is due in part to the new wall system.

So in most brawlers, you would hit an enemy. If they flew off the screen, they would basically wake up off screen. So you'd sometimes have situations where you'd just standing in the corner, punching the air, waiting for the enemy to walk into your fist, right? Well, in Streets of Rage 4, they actually bounce off the wall now. So if they hit the side of the screen, they don't go off the screen anymore. And so if your timing is on point, you can actually sort of juggle the enemy a little bit, which is a whole lot of fun.

And that, of course, that keeps, as you mentioned, that keeps the pacing up. And it's actually, I only, I knew that system was there, but I only put two into together just now. That when I played Streets of H4, there were no sequences where you would, for example, you would knock Electra off the screen,

wait for as many as like eight, nine seconds for her to walk back on the screen, kick off the screen again. It doesn't happen. And what's crazy here is, they even added four-player support to the game, which was difficult to test during this lockdown. situation, unfortunately, with local people, though I think you can play online, but the idea

of adding, I think it's only two players online. That's right. It's two players online, but four players local. And that's, you know, when we can eventually start to test that, I'm extremely looking forward to playing this with three other people. Yeah, I'm trying to put together Nintendo 64 four-player game video retrospectives right now. And I'm like, well, you can't really, can't really test that right now. So take my word for it, folks. Four people. I think just, Streeter Ridge 4 for me,

just in every respect is excellent, excellent stuff. The levels are so, the levels feel shorter. I don't think they are, but it's because you're always doing something. Yeah. There's no time when you're just walking right

or you're just waiting for something. It's just set piece after set piece. It really works for me. And alongside that, I think it looks great. It got some criticism early on. I hate this criticism, but people throw around looks like,

like a flash game, which could also mean it looks like a mid-2000s, XBLA game. And it doesn't have that look necessarily, but it's something people associate with higher resolution artwork. And the main difference here is that in those games, they would often draw a character and they sort of tween the limbs. So you might just rotate the knee and things like that. Whereas the streets of rage four, the artists went through and they drew individual frames of animation just like the old days. And in fact, they were targeting the frame count of something like Street Fighter 3. So you have

super fluid 2D animation. I mean, it really is sort of the pinnacle of that. Yeah, anyone who thinks this looks like a flash game just really like their eyes can't be trusted. You can't believe what they say. Exactly. On the sort of peer stage of this game, this is very minor but you walk past an arcade

and scratched into the window as where are my pixels, which really made me laugh because that's what I was saying when they announced it because I was cretinas back then. Did you figure out the secret stages thing there? Oh, yes. I love that. With the taser and the bare knuckle arcade machines.

Yeah, there's an Easter egg where if you find an enemy with a taser, you can pick it up, and then if you find a bare-knuckle arcade machine and you taser it, I guess the logic is the electricity activates it. You get warped into a stage or a boss fight from one of the old games, complete with sprites. Yeah, like console, the background and everything. Yeah, I think you remain as your... briefly drawn modern self, unless you're playing as one of the pixel characters, obviously, because they're unlockable to as well. But, no, the whole thing is just a spectacular take on

Streets of Rage 4. I said at the time, and I still think it's true. As much as Street of Rage 2 is like historically one of my favorite games, I think 4 is better. I think it's just one of the best belt scrollers ever, if not the best. Yeah, I think it's more or less flawless. I think it might actually be the best one ever made in terms of pure mechanics and just the feel of playing it. They absolutely nailed it. The thing that I value very highly, and this might sound a bit precious, so forgive me. You mentioned earlier, someone mentioned, sorry, XPLA games, because there were quite a, there was a little bit of a resurgence of brawlers.

With stuff like Sacred Citadel, Castle Crashers, Scott Pilgrim, all that sort of thing. Now, as fun as they could be, I don't want to level up in a game like this. Oh, yeah, I agree. You know, I don't want to, I mean, I'm not slagging off River City Ransom. I know people love it, but I don't really want to buy stuff to get stronger. I just want to get better. And that's not get good, because this game is not that hard on the basic difficult as it is entirely doable. But it's such a marvel to play a brawler that is just a brawler, and it's not like a quasi-RP.

Because that stuff always felt so tacked on to me. I mean, of course, if I saw a few complaints when this game came out that it was too hard, and it isn't easy. But the game does give you plenty of options for accessibility. like you can continue with three extra lives and three specials for a little bit of cut to your score. But the score is persistent, so you're still going to eventually unlock everything, because basically every time you finish a stage, you're filling up a little bar. And each milestone you reach, you'll get, say, Streets of Rage 1, Axel, Street of Rage 2 Axel, as a playable character.

Yeah, I think the challenge... It's just so friendly. It's so friendly. The challenge is actually a very positive thing here, because stages are short enough. They provide those sort of boosts, as you said. But you have all the tools necessary to beat any stage right from the beginning. And it all comes down to you and your skill. And every time you play through a stage and you're having difficulties with a certain point,

you feel like you learn a little bit more, which I think is the mark of a great action game. So when you come back through that same area, you're like, okay, I know how this enemy fights. I know the patterns I need to watch out for. I'm going to try, you know, this approach and it's that learning element that I find so fun. And it's something that happens when stages are short enough or more like when the challenge is bite-sized enough. This doesn't work when you have these massive, massive sprawling games where you have to go through just a ridiculous amount of the game again to try the part that you're struggling with. Or conversely, arcade games where you can essentially insert infinite quarters. If you can just infinite quarter your way through the game, like on maim, for instance,

I think that also kind of destroys the fun because it destroys the challenge. So Streets of Rage 4 really strikes this perfect balance of challenging the player, but it still has enough there to ensure that more people can get through it if you're really struggling with it. It's also a lot more sort of transparent and somewhat generous with the extra lives, I think. Yeah. It tells you specifically it's like you need 2,000 more points to get an extra life. It's very clear how many points you get from defeating an enemy.

So you always kind of like, well, I'm not doing very well. I'm on my last legs here, but if I kill a couple more Gelsiers, I'll get a one-up, and then I'll have a whole new health spot to play with. Absolutely. I mean, for me, it's, when I played on normal, I didn't end up getting game over that much until the final stage, where there's a sequence

where you go through a kind of a castle hallway with sort of chandeliers. And it's, and this is on normal. It's absolutely nails. It's just nightmare. But at the same time, every time I would get through there, I would think, okay, I see where I went wrong, I see where I got careless. I can

do this next time and every time you do a little bit better, you know. And if I'd ever felt like, actually, I've fought up with this now. When I continued, I could have just given myself an extra three lives, an extra three specials and blitz through it if I wanted to. There's no shame in that. The game doesn't call you out for it or anything like that. Yeah. It's just an extremely accessible take on the genre. I think what you're saying there is really important because when I go back and replay some of these arcade brawlers, they almost feel a little bit boring or wrote, where you're just sort of mashing the buttons to get through it

and they look great, they sound great, but you're not that engaged. Whereas in a game like this, you know that every little piece of life that you have is valuable. And you really have to pay attention to your positioning. You have to pay attention to your surroundings. It's not a game where you can just run through

and smash the buttons. It's really about timing, execution, and just being aware of what's happening. And that's what makes it so interesting and fun. It captures the streets of rage two kind of You can't see me but I'm doing air quotes here Storytelling as well because for example In stage two now

I'm going to skirt around sort of political issues here But you've been arrested And as you move through You're sort of challenged by both cops And kind of thugs who have been in prison with you At one point you round a corner And there are two cops

One of the cops is holding one of the thug enemies While the other one beats up on him and then you realize you realize at that point okay so I can beat everyone up and it's fine basically you know I know that there are feelings

towards the police which I won't get into but in the universe there it's just an immediate moment where you realize oh they're incredibly corrupt in this universe as well and they're beating up on it

they're beating up on someone which they shouldn't be doing obviously it's a marvellous bit of sort of scene setting and then of course as you move through the game you've got both Mr. and Ms. Y, I think it is, their forces and the police all coming after you. Yeah, the Y twins. Yeah, the Y twins. That's it.

Yeah, because Mr. X moves on. There's even that boss fight where they bring back the police car in sort of an animated sequence. I love that. Yes. Yeah, Estelle, the police officer who's kind of coming after you. Extremely popular. I wish that she was DLC. And I predict at this point that she will be at some point.

But we'll see. basically just a marvellous a marvellous game I thought really brilliant I agree, and I think we should also mention the soundtrack. While I still stand by the originals, I think that this is worthy of standing up next to them. But they actually have, they took an interesting approach here. They worked with Brave Wave, of course.

So, you know, Alex and Muhammad, they do awesome work over there. And they've got this, a lot of people work, working. under them as well as some other people involved here. So basically, the main soundtrack was done by Olivier de Riviere, which is a very famous French composer, but they did bring back Yuzokoshiro and Kawashima for certain tracks as well as various other composers, including Yoko Shimomura, Keiji Yamagishi, Harumi Fujita, and various others. And the approach was that Olivier would score sort of the main track for each.

each stage. And then these guest composers would come in and handle certain boss tunes as well. Though in the case of stage one, they actually did use one of Uzo's tracks to introduce the game, which I think is smart, since it immediately sets the tone for what follows. But I really like this idea of having these different styles of music all come in. And on paper, it sounds like it might not work, but I do think it all gels together very well. And it creates just an excellent soundscape. Yeah, there's a sort of dynamic music sort of thing going on, where as more enemies come in or as more set pieces come in, the music will kick up a gear, which I think works really, really well. Especially on the final stage, I mean, it's noticeable before then, but I know when

I first started playing Streets of Rage 4, I was, even on level one, I'm thinking, okay, this is great. I'm a little bit underwhelmed with the music, though, because it starts out quite sedate. It's a take on the first stage of Street of Rage 2's theme. I forget the name of it. But then as you play through and the enemies get more aggressive and that weird psychic crowbar guy whose name I forget turns up the music starts getting creepier and more sinister and more metal almost and more intense and it just works really well to amp up the the feel of the sort of the action it's just a tremendous little bit of just a little tweak it's a tiny little change but it really does do a huge favor to the game I think I also appreciate that one stage where you're basically

making your way to a concert venue oh yeah That was quite entertaining. I mean, it's the same as with, you know, the second and third game where they really do a lot of storytelling through scenery and music combination. We haven't even mentioned the new... We haven't even mentioned the new characters, barely at all, to be honest. There's so much to talk about with this game, but... It might be too much.

Yeah, I hate to cut off the love in here, but I do have to have to go to work. So we're going to cut it off now. Besides, Streets of Rage 4 is just out. Let's let people kind of discover. these amazing things for themselves. Because as you say, it is a great extension of the Streets of Rage franchise. You know, sometimes maybe it's good to let a property lay fallow for 25 years. If that's what it takes to have a really triumphant resurgence in return, then great. We're all patient here. We've all got time to kill. So yeah, anyway,

thanks both of you for taking the time to join the show and share your extensive knowledge and enthusiasm for the Streets of Rage series. It was great just listening to you to talk and, you know, I could just feel the, like, sense of the enthusiasm coming off of you. So that was great. So as we wrap up, why don't you both let us know where we can find you online and check out your work, John? So I am at Dark1X on Twitter and you can, of course, find me over on Digital Foundry. So we have a YouTube channel and we are hosted over on Eurogamer.net. obviously we cover a lot of modern games but my real passion is with the df retro series where i focus on sort of the history and technology side of retro games and stuart

um i mostly do my stuff on retronauts.com i'm uh i write quite a lot of the blog content on there uh you can find my stuff on youtube.com slash stewit jip but it's not as good as john's stuff though we do both talk about bubsy so there is that in common see exactly I knew. This is why we get along so well. I can already tell. And finally, I am Jeremy Parrish. You can find me at Limited Run Games doing Limited Run Games stuff.

Also, Retronauts Stuff and my video stuff on YouTube. And various and random other things. Anyway, Retronauts itself you can find on your favorite podcast hosting service, probably. We should be out there in pretty much everything. And if you enjoy the show and want to. help keep it going. We are entirely crowdfunded, pretty much entirely crowdfunded. Patreon.com slash Retronauts gets you early access to the show each Monday. You get a one week ahead of the rest of the people, the citizens out there listening for free at a higher bit

rate quality with no advertisements or promotions. And for $5 a month, that's an extra two bucks over the standard tier. You also get exclusive episodes every other Friday. day. Yes. So anyway, lots of podcasts, lots of opinions about old games. We're going to keep talking about old games because it's kind of what we do. It's what we care about. So John Stewart, thank you, both of you for joining and we'll be back again in a week with another podcast. Thanks. Thank you. It was a lot of fun. Thank you.